Sylvia Fein

Sylvia Fein (1919–2024) was an American painter associated with the Midwest Surrealist and Magic Realist circle that formed around the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the early 1940s. Working principally in egg tempera, she developed precise figurative and dreamlike compositions drawing on mythology, memory, landscape, and the subconscious. After living and working in Mexico during the war years, Fein settled in Northern California and continued to pursue both fantastical subjects and closely observed landscapes. She exhibited in the Whitney Annual in 1944, 1945, and 1946, and was later included in reassessments of Surrealism and women artists, including LACMA’s In Wonderland. A late-career museum survey, Sylvia Fein / MATRIX 275, was presented by BAMPFA in 2019–20. Her work is represented in the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Chazen Museum of Art, and Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.